Words and Music

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Magic Numbers

Magic Numbers

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Sule Rimi and Alibe Parsons find beauty and wisdom in digits, numerals, and counting.

Sule Rimi and Alibe Parsons read poems that find beauty and wisdom in digits, numerals, and counting. Accompanied by numerological work from Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis.

Numbers are beautiful, and mathematics is an art: that is the formula for this episode, in which Sule Rimi and Alibe Parsons read work from poets and philosophers entranced by the beauty, order, irrationality, and infinite wisdom to be found in digits, numerals, and counting. 

In addition, they are accompanied by music from composers embedding numerology and codes into their work, including Johann Sebastian Bach, Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis.

Readings: 

Bertrand Russell - The Study of Mathematics (Extract)
Mary Cornish - Numbers
Philip Larkin - Counting
Jo Shapcott - Shapcott's Variation on Schoenberg's orchestration of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, St Anne (Prom 24)
Carl Sandburg - Number Man
Ben Jonson - VI. - To the Same
Emily Dickinson - It’s all I have to bring today
Daniil Kharms - A Sonnet
Velimir Khlebnikov - Numbers
Plato - Epinomis (Extract) (trans. Edith Hamilton, Huntington Cairns)
Emily Dickinson - ‘Tis One by One - the Father counts -
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare
Wisława Szymborska - Pi
Jakob Bernoulli - Treatise on Infinite Series
Douglas Goetsch - Counting
Paul Erdos - a famous quote
Michael Donaghy - Two Spells for Sleeping

Produced by Jack Howson.  
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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